In an electronic component mounting process, screen printing has been used as a method of printing paste such as soldering paste or conductive paste on a substrate. In this method, the paste is printed on the substrate through a pattern hole provided in accordance with an area to be printed, the paste fills the pattern hole through a squeegeeing operation of moving a squeegee in a horizontal direction in a state where a lower end portion of the squeegee is pressed against a mask, and the paste is printed on the substrate which is set on the bottom face of the mask.
In this screen printing, since an appropriate mask and paste are required to be used in accordance with characteristics of a substrate which is a target for printing, it has been verified hitherto whether or not a mask and paste used are suitable for a substrate which is a target for printing, at the time of performing printing (for example, see PTL 1 and PTL 2). In the prior art disclosed in PTL 1, the use of a mask suitable for a substrate is guaranteed by reading and verifying bar codes provided in the substrate and the mask. In addition, in the prior art disclosed in PTL 2, printing conditions are set by writing characteristic data of past in a container accommodating the past using a bar code or the like and by reading the characteristic data during production.